The country’s age rating board (shortened to ACB onwards) will review its previous rating, so either the game will be available again on Steam in the country (after nine years, it has been geo-blocked), or it will remain banned, which will cause inconveniences rather than financial damage…

A month ago, we wrote this about the game after it became unavailable on Steam: “RimWorld was released in 2013 and hasn’t had much of a problem in Australia. Still, it’s been scrutinised by the ACB, with a possible console release coming, which could lead to a physical version. In other words, Ludeon Studios’ product could be on the store shelves, requiring an age rating; otherwise, there can be no such sales.

And the game did not get a rating: the committee rejected the rating of RimWorld (it falls into the RC, Refused Classification category), so it cannot be officially on sale ‘down under’ because the ACB did not like how it “matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults.” This explanation is why RimWorld has not even received an adult-only rating. It just means that the PC version, available without a problem until now, is being kicked off the Australian market!”

There have been developments since then. The ACB is meeting on April 20 to review the rating, and there have been instances of the ban being withdrawn without changes. It was the case with ZA/UM’s Disco Elysium, but there have also been examples of games having to be modified to comply with the laws there (one such example is South Park: The Stick of Truth), so who knows which category RimWorld will fall into…

Tynan Sylvester, the creator of RimWorld, wrote on Twitter about his game with full Steam Deck support that he has legal experts and expert witnesses on his side, so he is very optimistic about it and thanked us for our support. The console version is still unconfirmed at the time of this article.

At least he’s prepared for all possibilities, and that’s for the best.

Source: PCGamer